


dried-up waterfall

by catpoop



Category: Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Crying, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, One Shot, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28007964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catpoop/pseuds/catpoop
Summary: Laurence will take and take and take, until he soon grows bored. James learns this firsthand.
Relationships: Laurence Arne-Sayles/James Ritter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	dried-up waterfall

**Author's Note:**

> :-)

When he is thrown out, hurting and newborn, into the unfamiliar world, James screams. To every god who won’t listen, to every god who might deign to give him the time of day. Laurence simply stands there and sighs. 

‘Oh, calm yourself. You’ll be back in no time.’

The words make little sense to him, barely audible over the creaking of the building around him, the ticking of the clocks, the screeching wheels outside. His own throat is raw with pain.

‘Oh, shush!’ A shoe into his gut. 

James is curled foetal-like on the ground; the kick does not inspire him to get up. The sounds incrementally increase as a hand tugs at his clothed arm and his palm slips from his exposed ears. Laurence’s grip is bruising. 

‘Get up, will you? The housekeeper is away. Go shower.’

James stares blankly through him, beyond the unimpressed expression creasing Laurence’s face. The walls of the room they are in are wooden, dark, and constricting. He is manhandled through the doorway, into a narrower corridor, with paintings and further doorways adorning its sides. Laurence shoves him into one of the latter at random. 

‘Clean yourself.’

He scrabbles for something familiar, hands clawing even as Laurence throws him into the porcelain tub, cursing. Water cascades from up above as Laurence swears again, and then the door bangs closed, leaving James to sit alone, shaking and growing damp.

He wheezes, coughs up saltwater, sits in slowly dawning comprehension as warm water soaks his matted hair and bleeds into his clothes. Something takes over then, a foreign autopilot that has him reaching for the shampoo and soap, shedding his clothes and cleaning himself, as Laurence dictated. The water swirls grey-brown down the drainhole. 

His skin is pink by the time Laurence returns, opening the door with a rush of cool air. James accepts the towel thrusted at him with a shiver, silently wrapping himself in the soft fabric as Laurence turns to leave.

‘Come.’

He follows, unquestioning. The statue-house never came with directions, but Laurence guides him through this building with ease, coming to a stop only when they reach a bedroom, rug plush under his naked feet and bed wide and dominating. 

Laurence gestures carelessly at it. ‘Prepare yourself. Whatever it is you do.’

James blinks. Beyond the still-enduring thundering in his ears, Laurence’s words make the barest smidgen of sense. With his other senses, he takes in the windowed room, dark with late afternoon and various furnishings. The towel soothes his damp skin and he wipes his face on it – once, twice. 

‘I –’

‘Yes?’ Laurence turns to regard him with the most irritated expression on his face, and unbidden, James finds his feet stumbling backwards, carrying him to tip rear-first onto the bed. His eyes feel hot. ‘Ready?’

‘I – I –’ Embarrassingly, he sniffles. ‘Take me back. Please.’

‘ _Soon._ ’ Laurence laughs humourlessly. ‘Stop worrying your pretty head about it.’

‘ _Please_ ,’ James begs again, and this time Laurence answers him not in words, but in the divesting of his towel, and the snick of zipper teeth. 

Truthfully, he doesn’t know what to expect, but the feeling of hands on his bare thighs isn’t repulsive enough to throw him kicking and screaming from the bed. Laurence rewards him with clean clothes on his back and a duvet drawn over his slumbering body, and when James wakes he is back in the real world.

Laurence meets him on the other side like this a few more times, and James relaxes (somewhat, slightly) knowing he can screw his eyes shut and cover his ears (when his wrists aren’t tied) until he returns home. He thinks about the rhythmic pounding of the tides and the statues that rise high up the walls and waits (and waits and waits) for them to coalesce into reality. 

And then one day, they never do. James screams himself hoarse. Laurence never comes. He curls into the wooden floor and cries until the throbbing in his skull drowns out everything else. 

The room he is in is small, closed off by four walls, and so so dark unlike the marble sweep of his staircase. James fists a hand in the dry fabric of his shirt, wishing it were the familiar polyester of his sleeping bag, and wills the walls to spread outwards and upwards. They dim with the setting sun.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://swummeng-geys.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/hashtag_yikes)


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